I Wantz Roomba

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And a dog, I guess.

Job Changes
After my current employer budgeted and awarded increases of 2%, after skipping a year, I reckoned that I was falling far behind the rate of inflation, which, while low, is not insubstantial, so I switched on my job alerts to see what was out there. Lo, and behold, almost immediately I got an interview and very quickly thereafter an offer.

The thing is, I'm not really disgruntled. My employer has been very generous with me, overall. These guys took me seriously when no one else would. They've let me take ownership of the role. I've got friends I hope to keep - and that's a little unusual in itself. We're running top-notch software in a market that, as in my last job search, takes that as an important consideration.

So why change? Well, the money's hard to beat. Yes, I'll probably have to face low annual budgets in the future, as I would anywhere, but these guys have an incentive scheme and stock purchase plans that would mean potentially earning a third again of my total remuneration. O.k., a stock purchase plan means they're publicly traded, which adds market pressure to career longevity, but the stock'd still be mine, and that's a plus at my age.

Sure, I've got a team of analysts working for me, but so what? Being a manager has never been part of my aspirations. I like the work, and with the software we're running, I'm never going to have the depth of knowledge that I might get with a different product at a company that doesn't have the breadth not to let me learn it.

Although I've got a great place to go for a run, even a long run, as much as 16K without traffic, the new job is in the CBD, so I could get up at my usual hour, go running, and still have time for breakfast before heading to the office. Almost. Maybe just a coffee. And if lunchtime runs aren't any less an option, if a bit trickier. Up the stairs and across the Harbour Bridge, for example, or cross-town to the Domain and Botanical Gardens.

Anyway, I think I've talked myself into it. I've worked in publishing, twice, consulting (sort of), financial services, legal, whatever Chubb was, education, and ITC. Add insurance to the list.

Hung Parliament
Too bad it's not hanged, to make a bad joke.

Julia's campaign was awful, but worse was Labor's decision under Rudd not to pursue a carbon tax and the failure to implement the Resources Super-Profit tax, and worse than that was a leadership spill just ahead of election season. Not that I have any objection to Julia Gillard per se or to her being PM; I rather expected it to happen more naturally. Nevertheless, bad decisions and a punishing result in the polling booths leaves us with 3 years of childish bickering and name-calling, and nothing else. No great leaps forward or backward can be expected out of Canberra. What I can anticipate is that the backlash will continue in the States. Look for Labor to fall in NSW, for sure; whether to the Liberals or the Greens is unknown, but that's how I'm calling it.

One lesson from all this is that the campaign was a media triumph. That is, the media won. They spun this campaign disgracefully. Gillard was never presented except in the context of charged adjectives. She was "strident", for example, not forceful. Abbott was only ever presented with a bit of humor, never with any seriousness taken of his reactionarism, his inarticulateness, his transparent lies. Television decided this contest more than the voters did.

Sensed
When the Talking Heads toured their "Speaking in Tongues" album, Jonathan Demme was there to make a concert film of it, Stop Making Sense. What's of note, here, to me, is that after all this time, I've finally seen the concert.

At the time, I was one of the Talking Heads' biggest fans. They'd found a groove that resonated with me; my appreciation for more complex pop music was finally finding some bands that could provide the content, and David Byrne & co. were seeing audiences that other New Wave acts could only aspire to. The Forest Hills concert I went to was the pinnacle of their career and an ecstatic high point for me as well.

But I didn't really see the show. Yes, Burning Spear burned up the stage as the opening act for an inordinate amount of time, but I wasn't even tired of them before they were finally ushered off. Yes, the opening was enthralling, and every song thereafter well known and deeply felt - but now we get into the concert-attendance problem. At some point, I abandoned my seat, heading up into the aisles to dance along and groove with the music, deeper and richer than records allow and also far more communal.

So I didn't see the floor lamp or the big suit or how the modules were progressively rolled out song to song until the whole band was there, didn't see the performances Byrne put out for the different songs, or the other band members grooving themselves, or at least not in such a way as actually registered.

Watching Demme's movie I finally got to see the show. And I still love the music.

It's not the print I'd have chosen, but insofar as the artist selected a commemorative shot for 5,000 people to have for free, it's more than all right.

I was a little disappointed that there wasn't an exhibition to go along with the distribution, but that's o.k., too, although I'm quite certain that some of the other poses Spencer Tunick ran us through would have been remarkable images, especially the final pose, splayed out across the interior of the Opera House; quite Bocshian, I reckon.

When you look back over Tunick's career, with a dozen models and a step ladder in Times Square, for example, having to get the shots in before being arrested, what he's doing lately is almost mind-boggling. Look how dense this image is. And anyone who's been there can tell you, that's actually quite a lot of space to fill.

Oh, and that's me, at the top of the steps, over to the right, kind of in the middle.

Oops
I knew the Blackmores Half Marathon was an early start, but somehow I thought it was in October, ten weeks from now, not five weeks. I'll have to adjust my training schedule for the last three weeks, but I should get some long runs in the meanwhile. 76% as it stands now; I can bring it up to 89% before the race, barring accident or injury.

Klaatu Barada Nikto
Patricia Neal, R.I.P. Robert Wise's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" was an eerie and excellent 1950's science fiction movie, in an era when a lot of science fiction in cinemas was pretty bad. As an adaptation of Harry Bates' short story, "Farewell to the Master", it isn't anything like faithful, but as a nuclear scare movie, very effective. Patricia Neal was the best actor in it and I like everything I ever saw her in thereafter.

Industrial Inaction
I support the right of workers to act collectively in their interests and to strike, even if it inconveniences me. But “free fare days” don’t affect me either way: I have a quarterly ticket. Yesterday, as part of the City-to-Surf, buses and trains were free for anyone with a bib number, but I carried my ticket anyway, just in case, and because I already paid my fare, thanks, so why not use it? I guess if I bought a weekly ticket, it’d be possible to take advantage of these things, but, oh, well. Good luck, rail staff. I wish I could see a 5% raise again someday.

Postscript
I collect book reviews until such time as I need a new stash of unread books to work through, at which point I hit the Strand Book Store online and get my weight in literature shipped down for about the same price a new hardcover runs in this country. Or Book Depository in the U.K. One of those books I've read in the last two years was Postwar, Tony Judt's account of Europe from 1945 onward. It was terrific, by far the most edifying work of history I've read since A Distant Mirror. And now he's dead, just 62. Well, he's got a body of work out there, including an appraisal of the world at present, so I guess I know what's on my list for my next shopping excursion.

Race Day Minus 2
City-to-Surf on Sunday, 14k's of road-running madness. Thousands and thousands of people will be running out of the city to Bondi Beach, and I don't know how they do it, but within the first two kilometres, even though I'm in the second start, there will be dozens, at least, ahead of me walking. Where do they come from? They can't be tired already, can they?

Anyway, I'm down to 76% of full marathon training, having run 188k out of the scheduled 246. Given that the race on Sunday is 33% of a full marathon, that's not so bad. But on the principle that I'm really training for a half-marathon, I'm only 10% over where I'd hoped to be at this stage. But it'll be fun, and I'm as ready as I'm gonna be.

Results Update: 76:32 by my clock, and I might get a few seconds on the chip, since I hit the button early. A better result than I expected.

Worm Turns
I watched the leadership debate last night, although I wasn't expecting anything of any interest to come out of it, and Tony Abbott and the Liberals aren't getting my vote anyway. It seemed worth watching nevertheless, if only to gauge the respective performances. No kidding, these are acts, stage shows, scripted to the greatest extent possible, even with the moderator throwing in follow-up questions and pressing for answers more directly to the point than provided.

Julia Gillard was assured and calm throughout, never off-message. She was good natured, even when zinging Abbott, pressing home on sore points from the last election, points Abbott could only disingenuously respond to. His repetition of "respect for the decisions of the electorate" mean only that if he gets back into power, that has to mean the electorate wants John Howard back. That ship has sailed, Tone.

Abbott generally performed poorly. This was schoolboy vs. schoolmarm. He stumbled, mis-spoke, and looked shifty. His attempts to re-smear Gillard and Labor with their errors and failures - and there have been a few - painting them as an ineffective government, fell flat. I admit they would have done so with me anyway, but I think I can be assured in my assessment, based on the other reason I watched the show: the worm.

As the debate proceeded, audience members, selected for their purported "swing" status, rated the statements and query replies each leader provided. The real-time line graph running along the bottom of the screen was split between men and women, with a third line showing the overall rating. There are a couple of points worth making here. First, the worm is distracting. It's difficult to focus on what's being said if you're watching to see how it's coming across. I expect it's no less so distracting to try to key in a rating while you're listening, and seeing the line ticking up and down second by second it's pretty clear that the audience members had to be pretty frantically hitting those keys.

Another aspect is how consistently the audience was split. Women favoured Gillard substantially above men's ratings, even when men were positively inclined. Women also pretty consistently rated Abbott low, but where he failed to resonate with men, the women were more in line with the ratings men returned, so that the average overall tracked very closely.

Finally, by running the worm in three lines, the broadcasters have made the gender divide the central issue of the campaign. They've been pushing this line from day one of Abbott's leadership, as his standing with women has been a consistent theme of his political life, but that's been more a joke than a serious analysis of the state of play. Not anymore. Gillard's the new Thatcher, or the new Hillary, anyway, and that's where the campaign will stay. Once Labor are returned to power - and they will be - we'll have Australia's first elected Prime Minister. I don't doubt that Labor and Gillard see this as a message to hold on to. The Liberals, on the other hand, may wish they had someone other than Julie Bishop to put forward.

The Next Three Years (approx.)
So having taken the leadership and the Lodge in a spill, Julia's now set to take the country to the polls: 21 August will see us decide if we want the Mad Monk or Ms. Gillard to lead. I like her chances, although it does seem the media's pretty well intent on bringing down Labor, if for no other reason than that they think they can. God knows their take on Abbott is disparaging when it isn't simply incredulous. My own take on this is that the Fairfaxes and Murdochs and Packers and Stokes think they were instrumental in the downfall of Howard, the longest serving PM since Menzies, so doing in Labor as a one-term government, largely if not entirely unprecedented, would see the MSM as king-makers for years to come. It's a fanstasy, not unlike Osama bin Laden's belief that having seen the exit of the USSR from Afghanistan he could do the same easily to the "sole remaining superpower". Even if Labor is ousted, newspapers and television news are going to struggle for audience share and profitability, not to mention credibility, something they sorely lack here as it is.

Anyway, I'll preference Labor, I suppose, if only because to preference the Greens is futile and might see Tony Abbott too often at Kirribilli House for my taste, not to mention the hash he'd make of this country if he had half a chance. I'm just sorry he's got half a chance in August.

Run, Walk, Sit
If it's true that sitting will kill you sooner no matter what, maybe this weekend I should go buy one of these ergonomic chairs.

Calamari
The octopus is a witch! Cook it!

(O.k., that's not nice. Instead, let it go.)

Elections
Julia Gillard is Australia's new Prime Minister, taking over from Kevin Rudd in a leadership spill. I think I prefer my elections direct, but Ms. Gillard is a forceful and intelligent person, likely to do quite well. That she was portrayed throughout the '07 campaign as sharpening a knife for Kevin's back was just mean-spirited, but Rudd's popularity drop over the last couple of months has made the transfer of power inevitable, so here we are. We'll have to see where this takes us regarding policy. I don't anticipate a return of the ETS, but the Resources Super Profit Tax - which I rather like - could also take a hit, which would be bad, politically, anyway.

Meanwhile, I reckon the Liberals leader, Tony Abbott, is going to find it tough dealing with a woman willing to stand up to him. Look for meltdowns.

Like the Sound of Enormous Bees Right Up in Your Face
I've tried to watch the world cup. I got home from the game late last night so stayed up for the Socceroos, but I can't stand the constant drone of the vuvuzelas. I know it's part of the experience of a game in South Africa (although I'll bet it's nothing like this bad normally), but surely television broadcasters have the technology to eliminate it? Even live games are digital, so it seems hard to accept that they wouldn't be able to introduce some sort of noise-cancellation filter in place.

League Experimentation
I've been a season ticket holder for the Rabbitohs three years now, and other than those occassions when the game is technically an away game but hosted at Souths' home ground, I haven't visited any other team's pitch. Tonight I'm headed for the north shore for the Manly match-up and will get to see whether the behavior exhibited by the fans at ANZ bears comparison with the Brookvale crowd.

Update: A one-point loss for the Bunnies, but generally more cheery than I get coming back from a home-game loss. That may be a function of the venue, one not a thoroughly serviced by public transport, as anything else. Still, it was fun, and a much different experience than my norm. Attending a game with 20,000 people in a 80,000 capacity stadium is one thing. Being there where the fans fill the available space? Feels more like a game. My ANZ sightlines are good, but I'm fully 20 to 40 metres further back from the sidelines than at a standard oval, so I don't get quite the sense of the size of the players and speed of the game normally. League is fast, and meant to be so, and I got a good feel for that tonight. Not that I'm going to switch teams.

Turn of the Century
I suppose I had to know that there'd be issues with moving into a building as old as this one and as small. With only 4 units, there isn't a lot of money coming in, so ovderall maintenance has largely been restricted to what's been required more than what would be proactive. When the big hail storm of 2001 tore up roofs all over town, a special levy was required for repairs, but there's been little else. That's about to change.

The building's old. Probably 1920's old, with an extension maybe 20 years on (and apparently clad in asbestos, although opinions differ). The damp course is limited, it seems, to the exterior walls, and one thing and another has led to a significant interior wall rising damp problem. There's a lot of expansion-contraction cracking, interior and exterior, some worse than others. There's sewer-vs.-storm drainage issues - more a regulatory problem than anything else - and pointed need for exterior painting.

The engineer's been through this morning and will provide a report and a recommendation on a builder. It's going to cost us plenty. How much remains to be seen, but I'm figuring on $20-40k, i.e., $5-10k apiece. Still, it'll be worth it, as the actual structural problems we don't have at this point will be avoided.

Wear & Tear
One of the things I meant to do following last month's half marathon was to review the performance of the super-terrific shoes I bought back in January.

I'd meant to buy the trainers, but all they had in stock was the racing model. On the advice of the salesman, who claimed to use the racers exclusively, I went with that choice, although they were far more colorful than anything I'd normally buy.

Back in the days when New Balance was new and Nike were experimenting with waffle irons, it became a principle that the laces would be set back up away from the toes, allowing a better fit and less problems with blisters, or so they said. The Newton pinches a bit around the toes, I find, which was surprising, but in the end it didn't offer me any trouble.

The shoe does indeed encourage, even force, you to land on the forefoot. This didn't cause me much difficulty as I largely run that way anyway. But in some circumstances, such as wet roadways, where the rain interacted with the petroleum by-products lingering on the surface made things a bit slick, it sometimes felt less secure than landing more flat-footedly might have. Still, I didn't slide around all that much, so it's probably just my own insecurity interacting with Sydney drivers, who only get more aggressive as driving conditions deteriorate.

The mesh upper kept my feet pretty cool, a positive, as I'd been experiencing problems with blisters. This was more a condition of running on hot pavement in high summer than the shoes, however. Once things started to cool off a bit, it became increasingly less of an issue.

What I was especially interested in seeing was the wear. From January through May, and putting in something like an average of 20k per week, the shoes held up remarkably well, as you can see.


I'm still using this pair, but in the end, seriously debating whether to get a new set or reverting to standard issue Asics/Nike/New Balance/Addidas/whatever. The main point is that other than the gimmick of the cleats or lugs or whatever you want to call them that force your landing, there was no benefit to these shoes I couldn't get for $50+ less.

Happy Birthday, Queen
Thanks for the day off.

Of course it isn't really Liz's birthday, it's just the commemoration or some such, a practice observed throughout the Commonwealth. Last week it was NZ's turn. Funnily enough, it isn't even her birthday across Australia. I think WA gets next Monday.

I suppose the idea is that in days of yore the monarch would travel through its dominion collecting tributes. Travel being what it is, different days across the year would become the official date for such payments.

I don't know about NZ, but if you want to guess what HRH would have gotten from us? Opals, sure.